Firing Blind
by Ten Past Twelve
Summary: When a girl wakes up with no memory, a forest erupts from a suburb. When a bounty hunter with a price over his head finds his world turned head-over-tails decides to repay a debt, he unwittingly signs up for a long and painful journey to a place far away.
1. Forgetting a Forest

**Firing Blind**

0

Ear cocked, the Houndour lay on the floor in front of me. Only a flimsy curtain fashioned from cured Slowpoke hide kept his master from finding me, and the doglike creature already knew I was there. My hand strayed to my belt, and I heard the satisfying thump of a body collapsing onto the floor. Another twitch from my able fingers, and another man fell, this one from an elevated walkway in the airport. The Houndour was nervous now, having lost both his master and their patrol partner, but he didn't bolt yet. I guessed that it was new to the world, or a human hatching. When his eyes bulged suddenly and he dropped to the floor, as dead as his trainer, I returned my handgun to it's secure pocket and muttered a quick prayer for the three fresh cadavers, before sliding from my hiding place and weaving past suitcases and cardboard boxes to the exit. The dead patrol had doubtless given an alert to the rest of the guards before going after me, and dawn was drawing nearer. At a wave of my hand, the automatic door slid open, and I ambled down the deserted street. The sun hadn't risen yet, and the cool night air was a welcome change from the stifling heat of the airport. An Espeon, stretched luxuriously on an arbor next to a pleasant bungalow, greeted me with a lazy purr, while Duskull and Murkrow retreated from sight to escape the coming sun. I waved amiably to the psychic-type, and then continued to a fork in the road, where I turned left.

0

Already I knew that something was wrong. Where a proud and regal oak tree once stood, a rather haphazard house lay on the untamed ground in a stark contrast to the rest of the neighbourhood. Several strange rocks adorned the front porch, each one shaped much like the stereotype of a meteorite. Behind the house, a vast forest sprawled across seven or eight streets. Most of the trees had grown right underneath houses, and they dangled from the thick branches, suspended like bizarre fruits in the air. A car was balanced precariously on one of the huge wooden limbs, half inside it's uprooted garage. The forest floor, too, was a scene of utter chaos. More than one fountain of water indicated a wrecked fire hydrant, and the roads were literally ripped into pieces. A tricycle sat sadly next to a large hole in the ground, filled with rubble and debris from some kind of earthquake.

I rubbed my eyes and walked backwards a few paces. Nothing changed. Frowning, I jogged back to the airport and my mouth dropped open. A plane was embedded in the concrete roof of the building, and both were showing considerable signs of decay. Some greenery had taken over the radio tower, and moss was spreading like a rash on the runway. It was like I'd been frozen in time for a hundred years while everything had gone on. But now things were changing more obviously. A house, still in a tree, slowly faded from my sight, while roads splintered into nothingness. A blue shark-like Pokemon with a red belly and a yellow star on it's head shot into the air from the crashed aeroplane and soared into the direction of the rising sun. Growlithe and Arcanine sped in between fading houses and rapidly growing trees, and a strange stone pillar- about a metre tall- rose into the air, then hovered for a few seconds. A gust of chilly wind shocked me out of my disbelieving stupor, but still I stood in middle of the ex-hill, gawping at the sudden changes. A second, stronger, wind threw me onto my back, and I noticed that the stone was vibrating. Of course, that piece of knowledge was pale in comparison to the shifting earth, at least until I noticed that the wind was getting a lot stronger. A few seconds later, the wind was visible. Dust had been blown up from the ground beneath the stone, and now a dustdevil raged between me and the hovering pillar. Not that I minded much.

0

About five minutes later, the stone pillar fell to the floor, and the wind died down. Sunlight now streamed from the sun at it's zenith, and the surrounding area was totally unrecognisable. The airport had deteriorated into nothingness, and not even a brick remained to show that a house had once stood next to it. The only synthetic-looking material was the strange house that had heralded the destruction of Violet City, so I decided to camp outside of it for a while. As I parked myself a few metres from the building(underneath a bush, naturally), a Feraligatr hauled herself from a window, then reached into another weird opening and plucked a small girl from the building. She made to put the girl on her shoulders, but the girl shook her head and pushed the reptile's claw away. The Feraligatr shrugged her shoulders in acceptance and instead pointed to some strange orbs on the girl's belt. The girl took one and pressed a button on it, and sprang backwards when it expanded. A Pokeball, I thought. The girl must be a trainer. The ball fell to the floor, and a flash of red light released the creature somehow kept inside it. Scarlet metal shone in the sun's rays, and twin pincers snapped in unison. I wasn't familiar with this thing, but I sensed a level of power not present in Houndour and the other Pokemon I was used to. The somewhat insect-like creature shook glistening wings, making a dull rattling sound, and then stretched it's neck. That was as far as it got, though, when the girl leaped onto it's back and wrapped her arms around the thing's slender shoulders.

"Artemis!" she yelled, clearly delighted, and the creature's face crinkled in what I assumed was a smile. She reached out to stroke one of his pincers, and it playfully batted her hand away with it's other pincer, before shaking her off. The girl landed on her feet, unhurt, but something seemed to occur to her. She turned to her reptilian companion and asked, "So which one has Hyperion in it?"

The Feraligatr gave a non-committal shrug, and then grunted something. The girl cocked her head, but the other battler immediately tensed up, pincers wide open. I glanced around edgily. A paranoia was in the atmosphere now, and I was getting ready to fire a warning shot when Artemis struck. All I could see of him was a red blur, but I felt it before it got to me. Two solid blows to my gut floored me, and as my vision dimmed, a snapping pincer found it's way to my neck and started squeezing. I lashed out wildly with a hand, and broke my wrist on the thing's crimson armour. Blood from my mangled fist stained my windbreaker and the bush I was thrashing underneath. The girl shrieked something, and then something scaly connected with my head, knocking me out. The last thing I saw was a cloud of stars.

0

A sudden wetness on my feet woke me from a listless sleep. One of my eyes flew open, while the other one's lids failed to lift. I struggled with my gummed-together eye for a few minutes, before conceding defeat and propping myself up on my shoulders. With one eye, I surveyed the immediate vicinity. I was out in the open, in a clearing. Trees fringed the grassy area, and three figures, one slight and small, the other two solid and hulking, stood twenty or so metres away from me, on my left. To my right, the trees were sparser, but there were more creatures, too. I counted at least five before I decided that I'd rather not know the numbers. Among them was the red insect that had attacked me, that was for sure. I'd noticed it giving me the evil eye. The three figures on my left turned around and headed towards me, and when I strained to make out their faces I noticed that it was sunset, and that the sun was behind them. It was pretty obvious that the small one was the girl, and one of the huge figures was the Feraligatr. When they got close enough, the girl smiled, either taking delight in my pain or not knowing about the ringing sound in my ears.

"You okay?"

I groaned and nodded. She either didn't believe me, or maybe my shut eye was too obvious. "Athena patched you up as best as she could, so you should thank her... and I'm sorry about Artemis."

"Yeah, I'll go do that. So... what are you doing here?" I asked her. I hated feeling like I owed her something, no matter how many crazy bugs she sicced on me. The reasoning was that she told me what she was doing, and then I could help her.

She looked taken aback. "I'm going to go find something."

"Find what?" I said. "Actually, scratch that. I don't think I want to know. But I can help."

The Feraligatr snorted loudly, but then quickly regained her composure.

"What? My entire job is to find stuff." The blue behemoth grunted something to the girl, and she giggled quietly.

"Elly wants to know what kind of finder has a gun," she reeled off, voice steady and only her face betraying her true emotions. I almost didn't answer- she was the only person I'd ever met who found a real gun funny, much less the only kid. Then again, she hung out with bipedal crocodiles.

"I'm a bounty hunter. I find people, capture or kill them, and take 'em back to my client." She abruptly shut up, and I found myself grinning in spite of myself. "So yeah, I think that's the kind of finder with a gun. How about it?"

"No killing while you're around me, okay?" was all she had to say. It was pretty much in the bag. Just tag along with her, save her life a couple of times, and then ride off into the sunset, alone and not in debt to anyone, much less a little girl. Then the other creature muttered something to her. Very quickly, she was swayed back to shunning me. "No, I don't want to anymore."  
"Why not?" I asked her, all the while a mental image of me on my knees in front of her distracting me.

"How can you help me?" she challenged.

"I already said- I'd help you find this thing of yours."

She clicked her tongue. "No, I mean can you cook? Collect food? Build tents?"

"Of course I can-" I broke off, suddenly recalling recent events. Maybe cooking ranges aren't around any more, or there aren't any ramen shops, or money, or even freaking humans, an unwelcome inner voice whispers to me. "Shut up," I mutter to it mentally, before turning back to the girl. "Maybe I can't, but I know things. I'm no good in one of your little battles, but I'm savvy. I can help you guys out in a fight, and I'm dead good with my-" I broke off again, finally noticing that my pocket was lighter than usual. "Where's my gun?" I croaked.

"I gave it to Athena for a toy."

"What's an Athena!" I all but screamed.

Her forehead creased again as she tried to find words for her dear friend. "She's purply pink, and she has a red marble in her head. She has two tails, too."

"You mean an Espeon?" I breathed, relaxing instantly. It could have been the one that I'd seen before my world fell apart. I didn't know- was Espeon a common breed? I hoped not. And then I stiffened again as I remembered that some Pokemon could read minds, at least partially. And my murder of those two security guards- plus the Houndour- was definitely on the top of my mind, at least before that house messed up everything. I was fairly sure that none of the Pokemon or the girl would mind the two humans, but how would they take the death of one of their own?

As the purple feline approached, I tried- unsuccessfully- to shove those thoughts to the deepest, darkest pits of my mind.


	2. Three Bullets

**Firing Blind**

0

"I say that we get rid of the human!" shouted Artemis, and many of the gathered beasts yelled agreement, forming a deafening vortex of sound.

"_Quiet_!" a voice in all of their heads snapped. "_Now_." Somehow the second command was more forceful than the first one, and all of the creatures screaming immediately closed their mouths or beaks. As a lilac cat with two tails firmly pushed Artemis from his position, the voice continued, no longer dripping with ice, "_We know that the human possesses a gun, and may be dangerous to us and our Lady_._ He is not_."

"How can you guarantee that, Athena?" snarled the Scizor, green eyes blazing. "How?"

The cat rolled her eyes almost comically. "_Have you forgotten that I_,_ Athena_,_ am the only true telepath among us_? _I can guarantee whatever I like_."

Eyes sheepish now, Artemis stepped back from the Espeon, pincers up in a gesture of defeat. Athena sighed in mock despair and continued. "_He only intends to repay a debt he owes our Lady_. _Afterwards_,_ he intends to leave_,_ although this will not happen_."

"What do you mean," demanded the usually-lax Ellie.

"_I mean just that_," replied the Espeon. "_He will not leave us when he repays his debt_."

The atmosphere had intensified. "Why not?" Everyone asked, if not all at once, then at least once.

"_I only receive vague premonitions_. _Farewell_."

With that, the cat vanished into thin air, inciting a few rolled eyes and grumbles. "Pretentious psychic," Artemis muttered. Most of the assembled company privately agreed.

"I guess that means that she wins, then," surmised Ellie, clapping her enormous claws. "Back to the house, guys."

0

"So where are we going?" I asked the psychic cat walking adjacent to me.

"_We're looking for an ancient device_."

"And why would you want to find one of those?"

The cat gave a sigh of annoyance. "_Need-to-know basis_, _remember_? _You have no need to know that_." The girl, who was apparently called Di, was walking alongside the Feraligatr and Scizor from before. Athena, an Espeon, was acting as a bodyguard, although I strongly suspected that she was guarding Di's body more than my own. The other Pokemon had been recalled into their balls, and most had been left behind at the girl's house- according to Athena, trainers could only carry up to six Pokemon at a time, and having more than that would seem suspicious. For some strange reason, both the Feraligatr and Di had been convinced that I knew loads of things about this world, but the psychic cat was able to show them otherwise. I was grateful for that, but it was frustrating not knowing anything about their quest other than the fact that they were searching for some ancient artifact of anomalous quality.

"_Untrue_. _There are several of these devices_, _it is just that there is only one on this landmass_."

It was unsettling to hear one of my mental statements contradicted by an external being. "I suppose you know everything about me now, right? Must be great to have a big fat look in my brain," I muttered sarcastically. I knew that there were memories in my head best left alone.

Athena did not reply, instead showing a sudden interest in the trees ahead of us. I guess even psychic felines know when to shut up.

0

We'd been on the figurative march for three hours, give or take, when we came to the canyon. Frantically, I tried to think of a canyon within thirty miles of Violet City, and came to the conclusion that there wasn't. My 'bodyguard' saw the thought processes in my and released a vicious hiss, stopping in complete synchronisation with Di and the others. Artemis also made a guttural, threatening sound, this one directed at the rent in the earth rather than myself. Then I saw why.

"What are those?" I asked no-one in particular. There were at least a hundred creatures, all covered in sharp blades and bronze armour, barring our way to the canyon. The blue reptile standing next to Di grunted something to her small companion, and Athena instantly teleported in front of the two, proving that she really was guarding Di more than me. Then a telepathic voice reprimanded me sharply.

"_I am simply preparing to return your weapon to you_._ You may only fire at enemies, and should anything so much as graze one of us, you will be held responsible_," she hissed. I could've sworn that her hackles were raised as she was speaking. A moment later, my gun appeared directly in front of me, and I snatched it up from the ground as if afraid that someone would take it away. Maybe I was.

0

The first line of foes advanced upon us, taking their time. At least, until one of the blade-armed things mysteriously vanished and confusion flew into their ranks like an invisible enemy. Some of their eyes started glowing, and glowing green orbs zipped through the air, striking each other in a serene imitation of the chaotic battle below. Three or four were lying on the ground, either dead or unconscious, but their ex-comrades continued to war amongst themselves, oblivious. Then Artemis and the Feraligatr moved in, slicing through their armoured necks and chests with obvious ease. In seconds, the organised line of menacing things had fallen to the floor, most of them dead. Our two fighters returned to our cluster of safety, Artemis bearing a gash in his scarlet armour but otherwise unscathed.

Rather than advancing in a single line, the next group approached us in a group of rows- there were a lot more of them than before. Just as the frontrunners reached the point that their predecessors had fallen, literally all of the front row vanished from sight, probably to join the first bladed thing to vanish. This time, however, their disappearance was unheeded by their fellows, although they halted. The Feraligatr gave an almighty roar, and then what had happened to the first row of foes became clear. They had simply become invisible, like some Pokemon were supposed to be able to. The roar seemed to have another effect, though. As before, chaos en masse reigned through the ranks of the grim-faced soldiers, and the eyes of a few started glowing again. This time, however, they proceeded to run in the opposite direction from us- to the main group of our bladed foes. When the mindless ones reached their destination, rather than calling green orbs from their fellows like they did before, they started slashing maniacally at everything in sight. Including the other armoured things. _Especially_ the other armoured things. The armoured things they had left behind stared confusedly at each other for a few seconds, then took flight, heading in the same direction as the others.

"_Do you understand what_ _is happening_?" Athena asked me, telepathic voice strained.

I thought it over for a second. Glowing eyes, attacking each other... "Some kind of mind control?"

"_Correct_. _It's a psychic ability_."

"So are you trying to get them to kill each other off?"

"_Yes_." She fell silent, and I guessed that mind control needed a lot of concentration to pull off. So instead I examined my gun, now that it seemed to be unneeded. There were still three bullets left in the barrel, out of a possible seven. Three had been used on the guards and their dog, and I always left one slot empty for the hammer to rest in. I didn't want to shoot myself when my gun was in my pocket! Thinking about my latest kills brought me back to the purple cat who was pretty much using our enemies like a real-life war game. She didn't seem to have known about the dog, if not the two humans. Or perhaps she was ignoring that unsightly blemish in my memories in favour of diplomacy- probably the latter.

0

At last, the last one fell to the ground, as dead as a doornail. Athena promptly followed it's example, falling to the ground, and curled into a furry ball. Di sat down to rub her back comfortingly.

"Good work Athena," she murmured quietly, before standing back up and holding out one of the red and white spheres. "Return!" In a flash of red energy, the psychic cat was sucked into the ball, almost as if she had never been out of it. The girl compacted the ball and slipped it into her pocket, taking out another one. "Come out, Earthquake!" Another fighter appeared in front of us, this one about the size of Elegance the Feraligatr. It's craggy skin was light brown, and it had a scaly belly that would have been fitting on a snake or crocodile. The creature's build was like a Tyrannosaurus Rex's, although it's arms were at least the size of it's legs, and it seemed more upright. The topping on the cake was a saurian head, rocky spikes jutting from the back of it, and two horns shaped like drills stuck out from the front of it's head, one between it's eyes and the second on top of it's snout. Earthquake, if that was the thing's name, looked like something out of a Godzilla movie, and probably could have flattened all of the blade-armed things by flexing it's tail.

"He's a Rhydon," said Di proudly. "I found him a year ago."

His rocky fists came together, generating a seismic wave that bowled everyone in the area off their feet. Pleased with his performance, he bounded over to the edge of the canyon and looked down into it. Before my amazed eyes, a pillar of rock and earth sprouted from the middle of the gorge, closely followed by others, making a pathway of stone across the obstacle. Presently, the Rhydon returned to Di, his rocky face set in a grimace that might have been a smile. Artemis was the first to cross over, bouncing swiftly on the balls of his armoured feet. Elegance, with Di cradled in one massive arm, quickly followed, the scaly soles of her feet leaving shallow footprints in the improvised bridge. Earthquake gestured me forwards with a stone claw, and I hurried onto the bridge, not keen on being left with this rock-hewn juggernaut.

0

As I drew nearer to the other cliff, I saw signs of combat. A bloodstained boulder there, smoke rising from a piece of dead foliage, that sort of thing. Still I pressed on, hand on my gun, but otherwise perfectly calm. I was the best shot in Johto- who cared if it didn't seem to exist anymore? At one point, a huge dragonfly thing descended upon me, but a massive boulder thrown by Earthquake knocked it clean off the radar. This guy was coming in handy. First the impressive bridge, and a dead shot with rocks and stones. All of a sudden, we'd reached the other side, and things were not looking good. Elegance was locked in combat with a green and red dragon that was spewing flames at her, while Artemis was trying to fight off both a dark purple bat and a tortoise that continually emitted smoke from it's snout. A yellow animal with a glowing red orb on it's tail was frying seven or eight blue turtles with volts of electricity as they struggled to near it, and a blue bird with clouds for wings was aiming attacks at a huge version of a Pidgey, while it dodged aerial attacks from two pterodactyls that were coloured a dull lilac. Upon seeing this battle, Earthquake hurled himself into the fray, immediately swinging a diamond-hard fist at the bat accosting Artemis. I didn't wait to see if he hit it, instead scanning the area for the girl, Di. If there was a time and place to save her from death, this was it.


	3. Stone Dead

**Firing Blind**

**Sorry for the late update, boys and girls. If you feel like being a good person, review and make my day awesome.**

0

I spotted Di some ways removed from the main action, but she was by no means safe. A woman with a knife in her hand was striding up to her, movements jerky. Something glinted on the little girl's face; tears, maybe? All at once I was a figure of action, my gun out of my pocket and aimed at the woman's head. A bang- the silencer must have been removed- and everything froze. The woman dropped to the floor, blood gracefully arcing from her skull like a fountain of death. The warring Pokemon halted their battles at the sound of a fired gun. And the dragon roared furiously at me, fire blazing through the air at a tremendous rate. Oh well, I thought. At least I'm free from debt now. No spiritual unrest for me when the flames roasted me at temperatures hitherto unknown. Shame I had no thermometer on me.

Then the funnel of heat froze in it's tracks. A blue, pulsing energy was holding it in place, preventing the attack from reaching me. Was I dreaming? No, Di was looking as surprised as I felt, and even Artemis had blanched with the sound of Athena's cold, commanding voice. The fire, as if under the control of arcane forces, soared at a ninety degree angle into the air, before plunging back to it's source- the gaping mouth of the green and red dragon. It was nothing but a smoking corpse in twenty seconds. The other enemies blinked almost simultaneously at the loss of their singularly most feared comrade, then dropped to the floor, all the fight dying from their eyes. It really was that easy, with both Pokemon and human, I mused internally. Kill their _de facto_ leader, and the rest followed quietly. It was just a matter of discerning who the leader actually _was_.

0

"So you didn't think I needed to know that there was someone trying to kill us all?" I asked, voice as steady as a glass of water in an earthquake. Athena attempted to placate me, being the only one with the ability to communicate effectively with me.

"_Need to know basis, remember_?"

I probably could have shattered a diamond with my bare hands, if I'd been holding one at the time. As it was, the only thing in my grasp was my trusty gun, and that was far too precious to me. "That was my life, your life, _her_ life," I gestured wildly in the general direction of Di, "On the line there. And you say that I didn't need to know that?"

Her eyes abruptly flicked towards me. "_Your debt is repaid now_. _The agent was definitely going to do her best to kill Diana, and had she not died of a sudden cerebral haemorrhage induced by a gunshot wound, Diana may well have died_."

It took me a few seconds to recall what grounds she was distracting me with. I had indeed prevented the little girl's death, but the adventure was becoming interesting. If there was one thing I never passed up, it was a chance to test my gun against new and different targets. Maybe one day I would vaporise the brain of one of those bladed creatures. The eyes of both Athena and Artemis widened as I considered this. Odd, I didn't know that... whatever Artemis was could read minds. I grinned to myself. My mind was made up.

"I'm staying." Athena had a resigned expression of acceptance on her face, while Artemis shook his head slowly, as if saying "What an idiot" over and over again. Elegance seemed to be bemused by my decision, head cocked as far as her neck would allow, but Di surprised us all.

"Yay!" she shouted. Every head in the immediate vicinity, even Earthquake's (who had stubbornly stayed out of the argument altogether), turned to face the girl. "What?" she muttered, shrinking back into the scaly hide of Elegance, in spite of the weird expression on the blue reptile's face.

0

After five minutes of increasingly heated discussion, the three Pokemon gave up trying to convince me that the journey ahead might end up killing me- in fact, they said it probably _would_. Earthquake had sensibly retreated to his ball, seeing that he was unneeded in the argument. From what I gathered, Artemis was set against the very concept, Elegance was concerned about the dangers of a gun, and Athena was rapidly undermining all of their problems with me, contradicting every grunt or snarl with a witty reply, most of them bearing little connection with the last remark. Of course, I was missing out on two-thirds of the speech, so maybe it made sense to the other two.

In the end, Artemis had a sour frown plastered on his face, while the Feraligatr remained utterly expressionless- she'd probably have been a living hell for both psychoanalysts and poker players. Athena was slightly uplifted by the outcome of the debate, and I supposed she was one who enjoyed winning.

"_Let's go, then_," she somehow sung with her mind. Then again, if your only method of communication was telepathy, you probably learned how to use your mind like a physical voice pretty damn quickly. We complied, the scarlet bug grudgingly, and we'd gone something like five miles by the time that the sun set. I was still somewhat caught on the decision that I'd made five miles beforehand, and so I hadn't noticed that the rest of my group had stopped as soon as Athena had observed that the sun was setting.

The land here was a lot more unruly and wild than those cheap movies about young trainers painted it. For one, the grass was _sharp_. It was okay if you fell on the flats of the grass, but even coming into contact with the tips of the blades was enough to cut the skin. There were also tonnes of vines, not one thick enough to swing on, but all thick enough to strangle you if you weren't careful. Both Elegance and Artemis knew Cut, and Athena could use this weird psychic variation of the attack that dealt more damage but couldn't harm a certain element, so the vines were no problem, but naturally I was isolated from them. And either they couldn't hear me for all of the vegetation between us, or they had intended for me to wander off and die in the first place. Call me paranoid, but I strongly suspected the latter.

0

I must have been romping through the undergrowth for at least an hour before I found the pillar again. This time, it was firmly fixed to the floor with rocky 'roots' of a sort, and there was no tornado dividing us. I was understandably nervous as a result. It's surface was mossy, and there was a strange hum in the background, partially soothing my nerves. Partially.

The pillar and I were standing in a very small clearing, maybe half the size of the one I'd accidentally left the others in. As I took in my surroundings, shoots and blades of grass in between the trees I had entered through mutated into a thick and very firm wall of plant life. Behind me, narrow gaps were filled with leaves and vines, surrounding me. There was no fear, though. This time, the pillar was not overwhelmingly powerful or freaky, and there were no dustdevils. My world wasn't falling from my life again. Time stood still here. Then, a crack expanded in the rock, making a sound like a rusty door hinge. It continued to grow, criss-crossing and cutting through the mossy stone. A veritable spiderweb of hairline cracks and thicker ravines was covering the surface of the stone by the time that it all stopped and time went back to being static. At least, outside of the stone. Now, images were running through the different cracks, like a video put on fast forward. I caught a flash of light blue, purples and oranges, and a flickering flame. A creepy, disembodied grin leered up at the crack, before blurring into a mangled Spearow corpse. The compilation of incomprehensible images ended with a falling piece of paper, words scrawled upon it like a Spinarak web. It burst into quiet, subdued flames, and the ashes slowly faded from view. For some reason I couldn't explain, I sensed a great loss in the now-still pillar. I turned around, knowing that the vines would vanish at my touch, then blundered back to the clearing, a sort of mental compass in my head showing the way.

The party didn't seem to surprised or upset, and I would have been a fool to think that they actually cared whether or not I lived or died. That was cool, though. I could live with that. Although it was a little sad that Di didn't welcome me with so much as a lofty nod in my general direction. Then again, I didn't really want people asking after me.

"_What happened_?" pressed Athena. Ever since I had thought about talking about the Obelisk with the Espeon, she had irritatingly followed me everywhere like a pink Mareep. "_Actually, it's called a Flaafy if it's pink_." At least mind-reading was hard to control. Which brought me to another point.

"Why not just read my mind and find out?"

"_I don't use my skill for that kind of thing_," she muttered. I snorted, bringing up a mental image of the last three minutes. "_And besides, I can't see what happened_," she continued, ignoring me.

The parade of memory stopped short. "Say again?"

"_I mean, I know that the memory is there, but I can't access it_," she amended.

"Can that even happen?"

She considered the question. "_Sometimes, if there's a dark-type in the memory, or a powerful psychic is protecting the person's mind. But it's only happened to me once before this_."

"Whose mind were you trying to read?"

"_Yours_."

I turned from the discussion, trying to remember any memories I had involving dark-types. The only darklings I knew were Umbreon, which was somehow related to Espeon, and Murkrow, which I vaguely recalled had one or two evolutions. Now that I thought about it, Cubone might have been a dark-type too, with that skull thing going on.

"_Cubone?_" Athena sneered. "_That is no more a dark-type than I am_."

"What about... Houndour?" I asked, trying to sound casual. Either because Athena had gotten too used to reading lies in people's minds, or she wasn't watching me carefully enough, my casual tone worked.

"_Certainly_." The single, painful word chilled my spine. This time, she took notice. "_What's wrong_?"

"Nothing," I said, abruptly.

"_Very well_," she conceded.

0

"Kchaa!" cried the Spearow. The bird was familiar to me, and not just because they lived everywhere in Violet. I knew that particular Spearow from a past experience. A past experience in the twilit world between life and death, fantasy and reality. I visited it in my dreams maybe once or twice a week, and I was back again, for the first time since Violet fell apart. For some reason, I'd been expecting it to have changed, just like the world outside my head, but as soon as I'd appeared in a barge that was hanging in a canopy of forlorn trees, I realised my mistake. The forest and the lake were the same as always, and the massive rock extending from the horizon was still shaped like a sword hilt. The same silvery mist hung in the air, damp against my skin, and blurring the line between leafless branches and the night sky. I took comfort in the alien and familiar surroundings, then turned to the Spearow.

"What is it?"

In a fluid transition, the bird became human. A tall, bald man with scarred cheeks, giving the grotesque impression of an ear-to-ear smile. He wore his patched trench coat, the torn jeans, and the Murkrow-coloured tie over a button-up shirt that could once have been blue, but was now discoloured with years of street living. I knew him, of course. Old Father Green, the once-greatest hunter in all of Johto. Before Pokemon poaching was outlawed in the Kanto-Johto region, he was the greatest trapper that had ever lived. All of his catches made it to his clients, and every aspiring marksman hoped to become just like him. He'd once had his eye on me as his apprentice, but I much preferred the assassination of humans to the wholesale monster slaughter. It just seemed a lot more humane, and I could be sure that each of my targets had no living family, or if they did, they'd find some compensation money in their mailbox. Eventually.

"So, you've found it." I froze. This was not the voice of the old criminal. "The Obelisk is in your hands. What will you do with it?"

"Who... who are you?" My voice was thin and choked, just like how I felt at the moment.

Father Green gave a low chuckle. "Your mind created me to act as its spokesperson, much like you created this world to escape the confines of reality."

"Or you could be Athena."

"I could," he said, "but do I sound like her?"

I shrugged, still unconvinced. "Di could have some other psychic on board."

"She could," agreed Green. "But regardless of who or what I am, you need to know this. You are in grave, grave danger, beyond even what your bestial friends tell you. Of course, you should continue on, but remember what you saw in the dying stone." Next to him, on the deck of the barge, words began etching themselves in the wood.

First you find the dying stone,

Look for, then through, the Spinarak's webs.

Answer me the question that hounds,

All of the living and all of the dead.

Forget not the answer locked within these words,

Yet fail to remember the quest.

I looked from the strangely binding words, preparing to ask a final question. Green was gone, but an atmosphere of loss, just like at the stone in the forest, remained suspended in the air, like a blanket of sorrow. All of a sudden, I felt like leaving.


End file.
